'Three Star Mound') is an archaeological site and a major Bronze Age culture in modern Guanghan, Sichuan, China.

Largely discovered in 1986,[2] following a preliminary finding in 1927,[3] archaeologists excavated artifacts that radiocarbon dating placed in the 12th-11th centuries BC.

[5] Many Chinese archaeologists have identified the Sanxingdui culture to be part of the ancient kingdom of Shu, linking the artifacts found at the site to its early and legendary kings.

[13] The Sanxingdui archaeological site is located about 4 km northeast of Nanxing Township, Guanghan, Deyang, Sichuan Province.

In 1931, the discovery was brought to the attention of Vyvyan Donnithorne, an Anglican missionary stationed at the Gospel Church of Guanghan.

He recognised the importance of the discovery and contacted a local magistrate as well as Daniel Sheets Dye, a professor of geology at West China Union University (WCUU).

[3][15] In 1986, local workers accidentally found sacrificial pits containing thousands of gold, bronze, jade, and pottery artifacts that had been broken (perhaps ritually disfigured), burned, and carefully buried.

Task Rosen, chief archaeological expert from the British Museum, considered them to be more outstanding than the Terracotta Army in Xi'an.

[citation needed] In March 2021, more than 500 cultural relics, including a 3,000-year-old gold mask, were discovered at Sanxingdui at a 4.6-square-mile area outside the provincial capital of Chengdu.

The artifacts found in these excavations include fragments of a gold mask, traces of silk, bronze ware depicting animals, ivory carvings, and more.

[29][30] The culture was governed by a strong central theocracy with trade links to bronze from Yin and ivory from South Asia.

[31] This ancient culture had a well developed bronze casting industry that permitted the manufacture of many impressive articles, such as the world's oldest life-size standing human statue (260 cm high, 180 kg)[citation needed], and a bronze tree with birds, flowers, and ornaments (396 cm), which some have identified as renderings of the Fusang tree of Chinese mythology.

[citation needed] The dawn redwood also may be found relatively near on the eastern fringe of the Sichuan Basin.[relevant?

Many Sanxingdui bronze faces had traces of paint smears: black on the disproportionately large eyes and eyebrows, and vermilion on the lips, nostrils, and ear holes.

[35] The shi was generally a close, young relative who wore a costume (possibly including a mask) reproducing the features of the dead person.

Apart from bronze, Sanxingdui finds included jade artifacts consistent with earlier neolithic cultures in China, such as cong and zhang.

Some believe that the continued prevalence of depictions of these animals, especially in the later Han period, was an attempt by humans to "fit into" their understanding of their world, their cosmology.